Too Long

I have gone on too long without that nearness
which is the herald of new life in me.
I have gone on, but in a kind of drearness,
a poetless inert activity.
I have made no more songs; but eaten, worked
and played and rested; each day I have risen
to a dead-still haste. No vital thought has jerked
my listless self from its diurnal prison.
But then today a poem captured me
made up of stars and water: it was knowing
you, your voice, your body, and your free
explosive self. So my word-self is growing.
O you my love, my next of life, my song,
I have half-loved – and half-lived – for too long.